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From Mensagenda - June 2003
Survival: Thinking
by Ray Voet
Survival: Thinking
On Sunday, November 22, 1964,
Mensan Robert Tweedy, tympanist for the
Minneapolis (now Minnesota) Symphony
orchestra, hosted a wine/cheese party at
his home. A young man held his coffee cup
up, stuck out his pinkie, and said, “I have
read the unabridged dictionary!” Before I
could say so had I, Tweedy said,”I have
read it twice! More coffee?”
Mensans have a strong interest in
words, their usage and meanings. We
read dictionaries, study jargon and meaning,
and attempt to communicate that
which is most difficult to put into words.
Bloom, in James Joyce’s Ulysses, wanders
alone, ignored, barely tolerated, or
rejected. Joyce uses language to describe
the ennui, the angst of loss of communion
with others.
George Kneller, 1965, The Art and
Science of Creativity, writes that ”one of
the paradoxes of creativity [is] that in
order to think originally, we must familiarize
ourselves with the ideas of others.”
Aldous Huxley writes about perception,
where we need to be not obsessed
by words as they are ordinarily
perceived, but to consider what we apprehend,
directly and unconditionally,
by [the] Mind at Large...”
Karl Albrecht, 1980, writes that words
do not describe the world outside our
heads, but the perceptual patterns existing
in our cerebral cortex. Our language
communities, those languages with which
we are most familiar, are shared with
others with a common set of verbal maps.
These maps differ within a nation as well
as culture. Some languages define by
nouns; others, as Hopi, by verbal
descriptions. One needs to be
aware of perception and its personal
description.
While some cultures may have a
few words to describe color, an American
artist or designer may have a few
thousand to describe the perceived nuances,
the shades of expression and feeling
that involve the small segment of the
spectrum that we call visible light.
A few connoisseurs of language insist
on perfection in communication. However,
their own words are descriptive of personal
experience and not that of others.
The Gestalt school of psychology interprets
phenomena as ”organized wholes
rather than aggregates of distinct parts
and maintains that the whole is more then
the sum of its parts.” A few are able to
organize thoughts to allow operations at
many levels of consciousness. Such levels
may be at survival, leadership, organization,
independent creativity, social responsibility,
or the quandaries of moral decisions
— but whose morality is the most
favorable or opportune for that decision?
I have learned to listen to the words
spoken, to what is being said, and also to
what is the information that one wishes
to communicate. This requires that I need
to know something of the subject discussed,
of the speaker’s desires, and of
the possible bias that is inherent in my
own psyche. Also, knowing myself as a
Troublemaker, i.e., one who wants others
to think, there is that sense of disagreement
with the consensus, not because
of my personal belief or conviction,
but because I want to explore the
many facets of the subject.
That is one reason I love Mensa and
people who might be considered wise.
Thank you, whosoever you may be!
E-mail Ray Voet at:
ravoet@earthlink.net
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